RCG Blog To The Point

Go Digital, or Go Home

Posted on August 22, 2013

One of the many perks of working for a PR firm is being exposed to some of the incredible events and seminars your clients put on. For example, this summer “Team Arika” got to tag along with Boston-based client, New Balance, and attend their first ever Direct-to-Consumer Digital Summit at Boston University.

We got exposure to the TOP influencers in the digital and media space including speakers from Twitter, Facebook and Google, which was really quite a rush! The Digital Summit provided an overview of the ever-changing consumer landscape for the retail environment and the importance of digital communication channels for brands.

After attending the two-day summit, we pulled together our own TOP 10 list of fun findings, shocking facts and overall key learnings from the #NBDigitalSummit.

REGAN’S TOP 10 SHOCKING DIGITAL FACTS

1. Demandware executive stated that “digital divas” use almost 4 technologies when making a purchase. Yikes! What’s your purchasing tech of choice?

2. The majority of Gen C-ers would rather give up their sense of smell over their connected devices. Answer honestly – how many of you are guilty of falling asleep with your smartphone? We rest our case.

3. There are over 130 million (yup, million!) active users on Instagram. While a picture was once worth 1,000 words, today it’s worth over 100 million views. (Hint, hint: if your brand isn’t on Instagram, WAKE UP!

4. Industry Director for Google forecasts self-driving cars will be on the market for the masses in five years. Yes, you read that correctly. Not sure if we’re horribly excited or petrified by that fact…

5. VP of Twitter (whose two-year-old has more followers than both of us combined) says:

6. Google’s video industry development lead says: “Ditch the pitch: think like a content creator, not an advertiser.” That case was made by Pepsi MAX’s “Test Drive” commercial, which went viral instantly and received over 38 million views on YouTube.

7. 500 million photos are shared per day over 3 platforms: Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. Do we dare guess at how many are of our food? Babies? Pets? Workouts? (Bonus fact: FB reaches 48% of people while they are working out at a gym!)

8. Mobile searches are the future. Google’s head of mobile and social solutions reports that searches from mobile devices are winning, while desktop searches began decreasing last year. Take away: brands MUST offer mobile-friendly sites or they will lose the consumer. (Remember, the digital diva uses four different technologies when making a purchase, so the tech-savvy shopper will simply turn to another option when hitting a non-mobile-optimized site.)

9. Over 115 million people in the U.S. use Facebook every day, and 1 of every 4 minutes spent on smartphones are on Facebook. Wow.

10. Four bored teens in Australia created the viral dance, The Harlem Shake, which generated over 20 million hits on YouTube and thousands of viral videos across the world. Google’s video head encourages brands to jump on cultural memes like this to capture brand share. What’s trending today? Apparently, it’s goats that sound like humans. Baaa… yes, you heard that correctly.